Mauritania

Civic Action and Disaster Relief

A soldier supervises food distribution.Courtesy United States Agency for International Development

As a result of drought and desertification throughout the
1970s and into the 1980s, the government charged the armed forces
with epidemic eradication and disaster relief. In addition, the
military engineering corps engaged in agricultural development
and road maintenance.

Foreign Military Assistance

At independence the French colonial army in Mauritania
provided the armed forces with weapons and matériel. Later, in
the 1960s and early 1970s, France supplemented Mauritania's
defense capacity, training, and matériel as specified in various
defense agreements, which provided for mutual defense assistance,
for training Mauritanian officers in French military schools, for
French overflying rights, and for Mauritanian facilities for
French aircraft and naval vessels
(see The Independence Period and the French Military Legacy
, this ch.). In 1973 Mauritania
moved to reduce its dependency on France by unilaterally
abandoning these agreements, and on September 2, 1976, Mauritania
and France replaced the defense agreement with a technical
military pact, which called only for establishment of the
military school at Atar; Mauritania refused all other defenserelated accords.

Despite these attempts to sever ties with France, Polisario
raids in the mid-1970s forced Mauritania again to seek increased
military assistance. France, along with Morocco and Spain,
stepped up military arms deliveries. The rulers of Saudi Arabia,
Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait, all of whom supported fellow monarch King
Hassan of Morocco and therefore were anti-Polisario, also
financed arms purchases. It was reported that Mauritania received
30 French armored cars and 100 British Land Rovers (some equipped
with 120mm recoilless guns) to increase its military mobility and
that Saudi Arabia sent ten Pucara aircraft and other military
matériel.

The French also sent sixty military specialists to work at
the EMIA and supplied arms on a commercial basis. But France's
low-key military commitment to Mauritania changed abruptly when
in May and October 1977 the Polisario killed two French nationals
and kidnapped six others, all of whom were employees of the
National Mining and Industrial Company (Société Nationale
Industrielle et Minière--SNIM) at Zou#irât. In response to these
raids, France installed a military telecommunications system,
provided air support for the Mauritanian-Moroccan forces, and
supplied troops (from the French base in Senegal) and military
advisers, all to protect French citizens and their investments in
Mauritania. The French did not react when, a year later, the
Daddah regime fell.

As Mauritania's defenses deteriorated, it relied even more
heavily on Morocco, until by February 1978 the number of Moroccan
soldiers in Mauritania reached 10,000 men. In June 1977, the two
countries merged their military commands into the Supreme Defense
Council. Two Moroccan battalions protected Nouadhibou and the
railroad to Zou#irât, where two more Moroccan battalions were
stationed. In January 1978, the Supreme Defense Council placed
another two Moroccan battalions at Akjoujt and Atar. By this
time, Moroccan troops were stationed in all of Mauritania's major
towns except Nouakchott.

France also took an increasingly active role as the war
progressed. French personnel, the numbers of which had increased
from 60 in 1977 to just over 300 in 1978, fully controlled
Mauritanian Army training, and France had 1,200 troops stationed
in nearby Senegal ready for emergencies. After the military coup
in July 1978 and the subsequent cease-fire, however, the number
of French military personnel in Mauritania decreased rapidly. By
August 1978, only twenty French military and technical experts
remained. The number of nonmilitary experts and advisers had
increased, however. Daily flights from the military base at Dakar
continued, and although French combat air operations ceased,
reconnaissance flights over Mauritanian territory by French
aircraft continued. Moreover, the number of French troops at
Dakar had increased to 3,000. After the Mauritanian-Polisario
peace treaty in August 1979, which saw Morocco remove the bulk of
its troops from Mauritania, France agreed to double its military
aid to help Mauritania rebuild a small but efficient army.

Shortly thereafter, however, Mauritania reversed its security
alliances. Relations with Morocco and France soured while
relations with Algeria improved. In May 1980, the CMSN expelled
200 French advisers and technical personnel, thus terminating
French training programs at Nouadhibou and French military air
communications at Lamantin, near Nouakchott. After the March 16,
1981, pro-Moroccan coup attempt, Mauritania turned to Algeria,
which began to supply the sophisticated antiaircraft armaments
Mauritania had previously lacked. By 1981 Algeria was lending
military assistance in the form of training and matériel.

In the early 1980s, in the face of persistent regional
instability, Nouakchott again turned to Paris for security
assurances. In response, the French revived a 1976 military
assistance convention providing for thirty training specialists
to serve in the modernization of the Mauritanian forces. In March
1987, Jacques Foccart, adviser to the French prime minister,
traveled to Mauritania with a message from Prime Minister Jacques
Chirac expressing France's desire to continue its military
assistance. In 1987 France revised its 1976 military cooperation
agreement with Mauritania, incorporating the three standard
points of French technical military accords: the disposition of
French military personnel within the Mauritanian military,
military training for Mauritanians in France, and provision of
military matériel and logistical assistance.

Algeria also offered support to the Mauritanian military.
Algerian president Chadli Bendjedid visited Mauritania in April
1987 to discuss the Western Sahara conflict. He expressed
"Algeria's support to the Mauritanian people and their leader in
everything related to Mauritania's security, stability, and
unity." In particular, he offered to send Algerian troops to
Mauritania to protect the petroleum refinery at Nouadhibou, which
had been renovated and was being managed by Algeria
(see Energy
, ch. 3). The Mauritanian government, however, refused his offer,
citing its strict neutrality in the Western Sahara conflict.
Meanwhile, in 1987 Mauritania received substantial military
technology, logistical support, and direct budget subventions
from several foreign countries, including Canada, France, Kuwait,
Algeria, and Morocco.